Theoretical Approaches to Competitive Intelligence and Features of its Analytical Support

The article is an attempt of the authors to identify and describe the theoretical approaches that are valuable in the context of competitive intelligence and especially its analytical tools. It is suggested to consider competitive intelligence in terms of types of thinking of individuals that manage companies, determine the priority objectives of managing a business and approaches to managing the company. In this context, the theoretical approaches to competitive intelligence and the choice of its analytical tools are reactive and proactive ones, or opportunistic and strategic respectively. Companies are subdivided in accordance with applying one of approach in its pure form. This allows assessing the analytical tools used, determining their pros and cons, predicting results and also evaluating them based on the proposed scheme. Moreover, considering and studying any analytical activity by nature and types of managerial thinking, it is possible to carry out further research, form hypotheses, conceptual models, methodological approaches, practical tools. There developed and proposed a theoretical model, which can serve as a basis that in a generalized form gives an idea of the regularities of competitive intelligence